Spreads the light wings of saffron and of blue,
will perforce be somewhat detailed: it is necessary to answer paragraph by
paragraph, and the greater part of the thirty-three pages refers more or less
directly to myself. To begin with the beginning, it caused me and many others
some surprise to see the "Thousand Nights and a Night" expelled the initial
list of thirteen items, as if it were held unfit for mention. Cet article est
principalement une diatribe contre l'ouorage de Sir Richard Burton et dans le
libre cet ouvrage n'est même pas mentionné', writes my French friend. This
proceeding was a fair specimen of "that impartiality which every reviewer is
supposed to possess." But the ignoble "little dodge" presently suggested
itself. The preliminary excursus (p.168) concerning the "Mille et Une Nuits
(read Nuit) an audacious fraud, though not the less the best story book in the
world," affords us a useful measure of the writer's competence in the matter
of audacity and ill-judgment. The honest and single-minded Galland is here
(let us believe through that pure ignorance which haply may hope for "fool's
pardon") grossly and unjustly vilified; and, by way of making bad worse, we
are assured (p. 167) that the Frenchman "brought the Arabic manuscript from
Syria"--an infact which is surprising to the most superficial student.
"Galland was a born story teller, in the good and the bad sense" (p. 167), is
a silly sneer of the true Lane-Poolean type. The critic then compares most
unadvisedly (p. 168) a passage in Galland (De Sacy edit. vol. i. 414) with the
same in Mr. Payne's (i. 260) by way of proving the "extraordinary liberties
which the worthy Frenchman permitted himself to take with the Arabic": had he
troubled himself to collate my version (i. 290-291), which is made fuller by
the Breslau Edit. (ii. 190), he would have found that the Frenchman, as was
his wont, abridged rather than amplified;[FN#448] although, when the original
permitted exact translation, he could be literal enough. And what doubt, may I
enquire, can we have concerning "The Sleeper Awakened" (Lane, ii. 351-376),
or, as I call it, "The Sleeper and the waker" (Suppl. vol.i.1-29), when it
occurs in a host of MSS., not to mention the collection of tales which Prof.
Habicht converted into the Arabian Nights by breaking the text into a thousand
and one sections (Bresl. Edit. iv. 134-189, Nights cclxxii. ccxci.). The
reckless assertions that "the whole" of the last fourteen (Gallandian) tales
have nothing whatever to do with "The Nights" (p. 168); and that of the
histories of Zayn al-Asnám and Aladdin, "it is abundantly certain that they
belong to no manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights" (p. 169), have been
notably stultified by M. Hermann Zotenberg's purchase of two volumes
containing both these bones of long and vain contention. See Foreword to my
Suppl. vol. iii. pp. viii.-xi., and Mr. W. F. Kirby's interesting notice of M.
Zotenberg's epoch-making booklet (vol. vi. p. 287).
"The first English edition was published (pace Lowndes) within eight years of
Galland's" (p. 170) states a mere error. The second part of Galland (6 vols.
12 mo) was not issued till 1717, or two years after the translator's death. Of
the English editio princeps the critic tells nothing, nor indeed has anyone as
yet been able to tell us aught. Of the dishonouring assertion (again let us
hope made in simple ignorance) concerning "Cazotte's barefaced forgery" (p.
170), thus slandering the memory of Jacques Cazotte, one of the most upright
and virtuous of men who ever graced the ranks of literature, I have disposed
in the Foreword to my Supplemental vol. vi. "This edition (Scott's) was
tastefully reprinted by Messrs. Nimmo and Bain in four volumes in 1883" (p.
170). But why is the reader not warned that the eaux fortes are by Lalauze
(see suprà, p. 326), 19 in number, and taken from the 21 illustrations in MM.
Jouaust's edit. of Galland with preface by J. Janin? Why also did the critic
not inform us that Scott's sixth volume, the only original part of the work,
was wilfully omitted? This paragraph ends with mentioning the labours of Baron
von Hammer-Purgstall, concerning whom we are afterwards told (p. 186) for the
first time that he "was brilliant and laborious." Hard-working, yes!
brilliant, by no means!
We now come to the glorification of the "Uncle and Master," concerning whom I
can only say that Lane's bitterest enemy (if the amiable Orientalist ever had
any unfriend) could not have done him more discredit than this foolish friend.
"His classical(!) translation was at once recognised as an altogether new
departure" (p. 171), and "it was written in such a manner that the Oriental
tone of The Nights should be reflected in the English" (ibid.). "It aims at
reproducing in some degree the literary flavour of the original" (p 173). "The
style of Lane's translation is an old-fashioned somewhat Biblical language"
(p. 173) and "it is precisely this antiquated ring" (of the imperfect and
mutilated "Boulak edition," unwisely preferred by the translator) "that Lane
has succeeded in preserving" "The measured and finished language Lane chose
for his version is eminently fitted to represent the rhythmical tongue of the
Arab" (Memoir, p. xxvii.). "The translation itself is distinguished by its
singular accuracy and by the marvellous way in which the Oriental tone and
colour are retained " (ibid.). The writer has taken scant trouble to read me
when he asserts that the Bulak edit was my text, and I may refer him, for his
own advantage, to my Foreword (vol. i. p. xvii.), which he has wilfully
ignored by stating unfact. I hasten to plead guilty before the charge of
"really misunderstanding the design of Lane's style" (p. 173). Much must be
pardoned to the panegyrist, the encomiast; but the idea of mentioning in the
same sentence with Biblical English, the noblest and most perfect specimen of
our prose, the stiff and bald, the vapid and turgid manner of the Orientalist
who "commences" and "concludes"--never begins and ends, who never uses a short
word if he can find a long word, who systematically rejects terse and
idiomatic Anglo-Saxon when a Latinism is to be employed and whose pompous
stilted periods are the very triumph of the "Deadly-lively"! By arts precisely
similar the learned George Sale made the Koran, that pure and unstudied
inspiration of Arabian eloquence, dull as a law document, and left the field
clear for the Rev. Mr. Rodwell. I attempted to excuse the style-laches of Lane
by noticing the lack of study in English linguistic which distinguished the
latter part of the xviiith and the first half of the xixth centuries, when men
disdaining the grammar of their own tongue, learned it from Latin and Greek;
when not a few styled Shakespeare "silly-billy," and when Lamb the essayist,
wrote, "I can read, and I say it seriously, the homely old version of the
Psalms for an hour or two together sometimes, without sense of weariness." But
the reviewer will have none of my palliative process, he is surprised at my
"posing as a judge of prose style," being "acquainted with my quaint
perversions of the English language" (p. 173) and, when combating my sweeping
assertion that "our prose" (especially the prose of schoolmasters and
professors, of savans and Orientalists) "was perhaps the worst in Europe," he
triumphantly quotes half a dozen great exceptions whose eminence goes far to
prove the rule.
As regards Lane's unjustifiable excisions the candid writer tells us
everything but the truth. As I have before noted (vol. ix. 304), the main
reason was simply that the publisher, who was by no means a business man,
found the work outgrowing his limits and insisted upon its coming to an
untimely and, alas! a tailless end. This is perhaps the principal cause for
ignoring the longer histories, like King Omar bin al-Nu'umán (occupying 371
pages in my vols. ii. and iii.); Abú Hasan and his slave-girl Tawaddud (pp.
56, vol. v. 189-245), the Queen of the Serpents with the episodes of Bulukiyá
and of Jánshah (pp.98, vol. v. 298-396); The Rogueries of Dalilah the Crafty
and the Adventures of Mercury Ali (pp. 55, vol. vii. 144-209). The Tale of
Harun al-Rashid and Abu Hasan of Oman (pp. 19, vol. ix. 188-207) is certainly
not omitted by dictations of delicacy, nor is it true of the parts omitted in
general that "none could be purified without being destroyed." As my French
friend remarks, "Few parts are so plain-spoken as the introduction, le cadre
de l'ouvrage, yet M. Lane was not deterred by such situation." And lastly we
have, amongst the uncalledfor excisions, King Jali'ad of Hind, etc. (pp. 102,
vol. ix. 32-134). The sum represents a grand total of 701 pages, while not a
few of the notes are filled with unimportant fabliaux and apologues.
But the critic has been grandly deceptive, either designedly or of ignorance
prepense in his arithmetic. "There are over four hundred of these (anecdotes,
fables, and stories) in the complete text, and Lane has not translated more
than two hundred" (p. 172). * * * "Adding the omitted anecdotes to the omitted
tales, it appears that Lane left out about a third of the whore 'Nights,' and
of that third at least three-fourths was incompatible with a popular edition.
When Mr. Payne and Captain Burton boast of presenting the public 'with three
times as much matter as any other version,' they perhaps mean a third as much
again" (p. 173). * * * "Captain Burton records his opinion that Lane has
'omitted half and by far the more characteristic half of the Arabian Nights,'
but Captain Burton has a talent for exaggeration, and for 'characteristic' we
should reed 'unclear.' It is natural that he should make the most of such
omissions, since they form the raison d'être of his own translation; but he
has widely overshot the mark, and the public may rest assured that the tales
omitted from the standard version (proh pudor!) are of very slight importance
in comparison with the tales included in it" (p. 173).
What a mass of false statement!
Let us now exchange fiction for fact. Lane's three volumes contain a total,
deducting 15 for index, of pp. 1995 (viz. 618 + 643 + 734); while each (full)
page of text averages 38 lines and of notes (in smaller type) 48. The text
with a number of illustrations represents a total of pp. 1485 (viz. 441 + 449
+ 595). Mr. Payne's nine volumes contain a sum of pp. 3057, mostly without
breaks, to the 1485 of the "Standard edition." In my version the sum of pages,
each numbering 41 lines, is 3156, or 1163 more than Lane's total and 2671 more
than his text.
Again, in Lane's text the tales number 62 (viz. 35 + 14 + 13), and as has been
stated, all the longest have been omitted, save only Sindbad the Seaman. The
anecdotes in the notes amount to 44 1/2 (viz. 3 1/2 + 35 + 6): these are for
the most pert the merest outlines and include the 3 1/2 of volume i. viz. the
Tale of Ibrahim al-Mausilí (pp. 223-24), the Tale of Caliph Mu'áwiyah (i. pp.
521-22), the Tale of Mukhárik the Musician (i. pp. 224- 26), and the half tale
of Umm 'Amr (i. p. 522). They are quoted bodily from the "Halbat al- Kumayt"
and from the "Kitáb al-Unwán fí Makáid al-Niswán," showing that at the early
stage of his labours the translator, who published in parts, had not read the
book on which he was working; or, at least, had not learned that all the three
and a half had been borrowed from The Nights. Thus the grand total is
represented by 106 1/2 tales, and the reader will note the difference between
106 1/2 and the diligent and accurate reviewer's "not much more than two
hundred." In my version the primary tales amount to 171; the secondaries, &c.,
to 96 and the total to 267, while Mr. Payne has 266.[FN#449] And these the
critic swells to "over four hundred!" Thus I have more than double the number
of pages in Lane's text (allowing the difference between his 38 lines to an
oft-broken page and my 41) and nearly two and a half tales to his one, and
therefore I do not mean "a third as much again."
Thus, too, we can deal with the dishonest assertions concerning Lane's
translation "not being absolutely complete" (p. 171) and that "nobody desired
to see the objectionable passages which constituted the bulk of Lane's
omissions restored to their place in the text" (p. 175).
The critic now passes to The Uncle's competence for the task, which he grossly
exaggerates. Mr. Lane had no "intimate acquaintance with Mahommedan life" (p.
174). His "Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians" should have been
entitled "Modern Cairenes;" he had seen nothing of Nile-land save what was
shown to him by a trip to Philæ in his first visit (1825-28) and another to
Thebes during his second, he was profoundly ignorant of Egypt as a whole, and
even in Cairo he knew nothing of woman-life and child-life--two thirds of
humanity. I doubt if he could have understood the simplest expression in baby
language; not to mention the many idioms peculiar to the Harem nursery. The
characteristic of his work is geniality combined with a true affection for his
subject, but no scholar can ignore its painful superficiality. His studies of
legal theology gave him much weight with the Olema, although, at the time when
he translated The Nights, his knowledge of Arabic was small. Hence the number
of lapses which disfigures his pages. These would have been excusable in an
Orientalist working out of Egypt, but Lane had a Shaykh ever at his elbow and
he was always able to command the assistance of the University Mosque,
Al-Azhar. I need not enter upon the invidious task of cataloguing these
errors, especially as the most glaring have been cursorily noticed in my
volumes. Mr. Lane after leaving Egypt became one of the best Arabic scholars
of his day, but his fortune did not equal his deserts. The Lexicon is a fine
work although sadly deficient in the critical sense, but after the labour of
thirty-four years (it began printing in 1863) it reached only the 19th letter
Ghayn (p. 2386). Then invidious Fate threw it into the hands of Mr. Stanley
Lane-Poole. With characteristic audacity he disdained to seek the services of
some German Professor, an order of men which, rarely dining out and caring
little for "Society," can devote itself entirely to letters, perhaps he
hearkened to the silly charge against the Teuton of minuteness and futility of
research as opposed to "good old English breadth and suggestiveness of
treatment." And the consequence has been a "continuation" which serves as a
standard whereby to measure the excellence of the original work and the woful
falling- off and deficiencies of the sequel-- the latter retaining of the
former naught save the covers. [FN#450]
Of Mr. Lane's Notes I have ever spoken highly: they are excellent and
marvellously misplaced--non erat his locus. The text of a story-book is too
frail to bear so ponderous a burden of classical Arabian lore, and the
annotations injure the symmetry of the book as a work of art. They begin with
excessive prolixity: in the Introduction these studies fill 27 closely printed
pages to 14 of a text broken by cuts and vignettes. In chaps. i. the
proportion is pp. 20, notes: 15 text, and in chaps. ii. it is pp. 20: 35. Then
they become under the publisher's protest, beautifully less; and in vol. iii.
chaps. 30 (the last) they are pp. 5: 57. Long disquisitions, "On the initial
Moslem formula," "On the Wickedness of Women," "On Fate and Destiny," "On
Arabian Cosmogony," "On Slaves," "On Magic," "On the Two Grand Festivals," all
these being appended to the Introduction and the first chapter, are mere hors
d'oeuvres: such "copy" should have been reserved for another edition of "The
Modern Egyptians." The substitution of chapters for Nights was perverse and
ill-judged as it could be, but it appears venial compared with condensing the
tales in a commentary, thus converting the Arabian Nights into Arabian Notes.
However, "Arabian Society in the Middle Ages," a legacy left by the "Uncle and
Master", and like the tame and inadequate "Selections from the Koran,"
utilised by the grand-nephew, has been of service to the Edinburgh. Also, as
it appears three several and distinct times in one article (pp. 166, 174, and
183), we cannot but surmise that a main object of the critique was to
advertise the volume. Men are crafty in these days when practicing the "puff
indirect."
But the just complaint against Lane's work is its sin of omission. The partial
Reviewer declares (pp. 174 75) that the Arabist "retranslated The Nights in a
practical spirit, omitting what was objectionable, together with a few
tales(!) that were, on the whole, uninteresting or tautological, and enriching
the work with a multitude of valuable notes. We had now a scholarly version of
the greater part of The Nights imbued with the spirit of the East and rich in
illustrative comment; and for forty years no one thought of anything more,
although Galland still kept his hold on the nursery." Despite this spurious
apology, the critic is compelled cautiously to confess (p. 172), "We are not
sure that some of these omissions were not mistaken;" and he instances
"Abdallah the Son of Fazil" and "Abu'l-Hasan of Khorasan" (he means, I
suppose, Abu Hasan al-Ziyádi and the Khorasani Man, iv. 285), whilst he
suggests, "a careful abridgment of the tale of Omar the Son of No'man" (ii.
7,, etc.). Let me add that wittiest and most rollicking of Rabelaisian skits,
"All the Persian and the Kurd Sharper" (iv. 149), struck-out in the very
wantonness of "respectability;" and the classical series, an Arabian "Pilpay,"
entitled "King Jali'ád of Hind and his Wazir Shimas" (iv. 32). Nor must I omit
to notice the failure most injurious to the work which destroyed in it half
the "spirit of the East." Mr. Lane had no gift of verse or rhyme: he must have
known that the ten thousand lines of the original Nights formed a striking and
necessary contrast with the narrative part, acting as aria to recitativo. Yet
he rendered them only in the baldest and most prosaic of English without even
the balanced style of the French translations. He can be excused only for one
consideration--bad prose is not so bad as bad verse.
The ill-judged over-appreciation and glorification of Mr. Lane is followed (p.
176) by the depreciation and bedevilment of Mr. John Payne, who first taught
the world what The Nights really is. We are told that the author (like myself)
"unfortunately did not know Arabic;" and we are not told that he is a sound
Persian scholar: however, "he undoubtedly managed to pick up enough of the
language(!) to understand The Arabian Nights with the assistance of the
earlier translations of (by?) Torrens and Lane," the former having printed
only one volume out of some fifteen. This critic thinks proper now to ignore
the "old English wall-papers," of Mr. R. S. Poole, indeed he concedes to the
translator of Villon, a "genius for language," a "singular robust and
masculine prose, which for the present purpose he intentionally weighted with
archaisms and obsolete words but without greatly injuring its force or
brilliancy" (p. 177). With plausible candour he also owns that the version "is
a fine piece of English, it is also, save where the exigencies of rhyme
compelled a degree of looseness, remarkably literal" (p. 178). Thus the author
is damned with faint praise by one who utterly fails to appreciate the
portentous difference between linguistic genius and linguistic mediocrity, and
the Reviewer proceeds, "a careful collation" (we have already heard what his
"careful" means) "of the different versions with their originals leads us to
the conclusion that Mr. Payne's version is little less faithful than Lane's in
those parts which are common to both, and is practically as close a rendering
as is desirable" (p. 178). Tell the truth, man, and shame the Devil! I assert
and am ready to support that the "Villon version" is incomparably superior to
Lane's not only in its simple, pure and forcible English, but also in its
literal and absolute correctness, being almost wholly free from the blunders
and inaccuracies which everywhere disfigure Torrens, and which are rarely
absent from Lane. I also repeat that wherever the style and the subject are
the most difficult to treat, Mr. Payne comes forth most successfully from the
contest, thus giving the best proof of his genius and capacity for
painstaking. Of the metrical part, which makes the Villon version as superior
to Lane's as virgin gold to German silver, the critique offers only three
inadequate specimens specially chosen and accompanied with a growl that "the
verse is nothing remarkable" (p. 177) and that the author is sometimes "led
into extreme liberties with the original" (ibid.). Not a word of praise for
mastering the prodigious difficulties of the monorhyme!
But--and there is a remarkable power in this particle--Mr. Payne's work is
"restricted to the few wealthy collectors of proscribed books and what
booksellers' catalogues describe as facetiæ'" (p. 179); for "when an Arabic
word is unknown to the literary language" (what utter imbecility!), "and
belongs only to the low vocabulary of the gutter" (which the most "elegant"
writers most freely employ), "Mr. Payne laboriously searches out a
corresponding term in English 'Billingsgate,' and prides himself upon an
accurate reproduction of the tone of the original" (p. 178). This is a
remarkable twisting of the truth. Mr. Payne persisted, despite my frequent
protests, in rendering the "nursery words" and the "terms too plainly
expressing natural situations" by old English such as "kaze" and "swive,"
equally ignored by the "gutter" and by "Billingsgate": he also omitted an
offensive line whenever it did not occur in all the texts and could honestly
be left untranslated. But the unfact is stated for a purpose: here the
Reviewer mounts the high horse and poses as the Magister Morum per
excellentiam. The Battle of the Books has often been fought, the crude text
versus the bowdlerised and the expurgated; and our critic can contribute to
the great fray only the merest platitudes. "There is an old and trusty saying
that 'evil communications corrupt good manners,' end it is a well-known fact
that the discussion(?) and reading of depraved literature leads (sic)
infallibly to the depravation of the reader's mind" (p. 179). [FN#451] I
should say that the childish indecencies and the unnatural vice of the
original cannot deprave any mind save that which is perfectly prepared to be
depraved; the former would provoke only curiosity and amusement to see bearded
men such mere babes, and the latter would breed infinitely more disgust than
desire. The man must be prurient and lecherous as a dog-faced baboon in rut to
have aught of passion excited by either. And most inept is the conclusion, "So
long as Mr. Payne's translation remains defiled by words, sentences, and whole
paragraphs descriptive of coarse and often horribly depraved sensuality, it
can never stand beside Lane's, which still remains the standard version of the
Arabian Nights" (p. 179). Altro! No one knows better than the clique that
Lane, after an artificially prolonged life of some half-century, has at last
been weighed in the balance and been found wanting; that he is dying that
second death which awaits the unsatisfactory worker and that his Arabian
Nights are consigned by the present generation to the limbo of things obsolete
and forgotten.
But if Mr. Payne is damned with poor praise and mock modesty, my version is
condemned without redemption--beyond all hope of salvation: there is not a
word in favour of a work which has been received by the reviewers with a
chorus of kindly commendation. "The critical battery opens with a round-shot."
"Another complete translation is now appearing in a surreptitious way" (p.
179). How "surreptitious" I ask of this scribe, who ekes not the lack of
reason by a superfluity of railing, when I sent out some 24,000--30,000
advertisements and published my project in the literary papers? "The
amiability of the two translators (Payne and Burton) was testified by their
each dedicating a volume to the other. So far as the authors are concerned
nothing could be more harmonious and delightful; but the public naturally ask,
What do we want with two forbidden versions?" And I again inquire, What can be
done by me to satisfy this atrabilious and ill-conditioned Aristarchus? Had I
not mentioned Mr. Payne, my silence would have been construed into envy,
hatred and malice: if I am proud to acknowledge my friend's noble work the
proceeding engenders a spiteful sneer. As regards the "want," public demand is
easily proved. It is universally known (except to the Reviewer who will not
know) that Mr. Payne, who printed only 500 copies, was compelled to refuse as
many hundreds of would be subscribers; and, when my design was made public by
the Press, these and others at once applied to me. "To issue a thousand still
more objectionable copies by another and not a better hand" (notice the quip
cursive!) may "seem preposterous" (p. 180), but only to a writer so
"preposterous" as this.
"A careful (again!) examination of Captain Burton's translation shows that he
has not, as he pretends(!), corrected it to agree with the Calcutta text, but
has made a hotch-potch of various texts, choosing one or another--Cairo,
Breslau, Macnaghten or first Calcutta--according as it presented most of the
'characteristic' detail (note the dig in the side vicious), in which Captain
Burton's version is peculiarly strong" (p. 180). So in return for the severe
labour of collating the four printed texts and of supplying the palpable
omissions, which by turns disfigure each and every of the quartette, thus
producing a complete copy of the Recueil, I gain nothing but blame. My French
friend writes to me: Lorsqu'il s'agit d'établir un texte d'après différents
manuscrits, il est certain qu'il faut prendre pour base une-seule redaction.
Mais il n'est pas de même d'une traduction. Il est conforme aux règles de la
saine critique littéraire, de suivre tous les textes. Lane, I repeat,
contented himself with the imperfect Bulak text while Payne and I preferred
the Macnaghten Edition which, says the Reviewer, with a futile falsehood all
his own, is "really only a revised form of the Cairo text" [FN#452] (ibid.).
He concludes, making me his rival in ignorance, that I am unacquainted with
the history of the MS. from which the four- volume Calcutta Edition was
printed (ibid.). I should indeed be thankful to him if he could inform me of
its ultimate fate: it has been traced by me to the Messieurs Allen and I have
vainly consulted Mr. Johnston who carries on the business under the name of
that now defunct house. The MS. has clean disappeared.
"On the other hand he (Captain Burton) sometimes omits passages which he
considers(!) tautological and thereby deprives his version of the merit of
completeness (e.g. vol. v. p. 327). It is needless to remark that this
uncertainty about the text destroys the scholarly value of the translation"
(p. 180). The scribe characteristically forgets to add that I have invariably
noted these excised passages which are always the merest repetitions, damnable
iterations of a twice-, and sometimes a thrice-told tale, and that I so act
upon the great principle--in translating a work of imagination and "inducing"
an Oriental tale, the writer's first duty to his readers is making his pages
readable.
"Captain Burton's version is sometimes rather loose" (p.180), says the critic
who quotes five specimens out of five volumes and who might have quoted five
hundred. This is another favourite "dodge" with the rogue-reviewer, who
delights to cite words and phrases and texts detached from their contexts. A
translator is often compelled, by way of avoiding recurrences which no English
public could endure, to render a word, whose literal and satisfactory meaning
he has already given, by a synonym or a homonym in no way so sufficient or so
satisfactory. He charges me with rendering "Siyar, which means 'doings,' by
'works and words"'; little knowing that the veteran Orientalist, M. Joseph
Derenbourgh (p. 98, Johannes de Capua, Directorium, etc.), renders "Akhlák-í
wa Síratí" (sing. of Siyar) by caractère et conducte, the latter consisting of
deeds and speech. He objects to "Kabir" (lit.=old) being turned into very old;
yet this would be its true sense were the Ráwí or story-teller to lay stress
and emphasis upon the word, as here I suppose him to have done. But what does
the Edinburgh know of the Ráwí? Again I render "Mal'únah" (not the mangled
Mal'ouna) lit. = accurst, as "damned whore," which I am justified in doing
when the version is of the category Call-a-spade-a-spade.
"Captain Burton's Arabian Nights, however, has another defect besides this
textual inaccuracy" (p. 180); and this leads to a whole page of abusive
rhetoric anent my vocabulary: the Reviewer has collected some thirty
specimens--he might have collected three hundred from the five volumes--and he
concludes that the list places Captain Burton's version "quite out of the
category of English books" (p. 181) and "extremely annoying to any reader with
a feeling for style." Much he must know of modern literary taste which
encourages the translator of an ancient work such as Mr. Gibb's Aucassin and
Nicolette (I quote but one in a dozen) to borrow the charm of antiquity by
imitating the nervous and expressive language of the pre-Elizabethans and
Shakespeareans. Let him compare any single page of Mr. Payne with Messieurs
Torrens and Lane and he will find that the difference saute aux yeux. But a
purist who objects so forcibly to archaism and archaicism should avoid such
terms as "whilom Persian Secretary" (p. 170); as anthophobia, which he is
compelled to explain by "dread of selecting only what is best" (p. 175), as
anthophobist (p. 176); as "fatuous ejaculations" (p. 183), as a "raconteur"
(p. 186), and as "intermedium" (p. 194) terms which are certainly not
understood by the general. And here we have a list of six in thirty-three
pages:--evidently this Reviewer did not expect to be reviewed.
"Here is a specimen of his (Captain Burton's) verse, in which, by the way,
there is seen another example of the careless manner in which the proofs have
been corrected" (p. 181). Generous and just to a work printed from abroad and
when absence prevented the author's revision: false as unfair to boot! And
what does the critic himself but show two several misprints in his 33 pages;
"Mr. Payne, vol. ix. p. 274" (p. 168, for vol. i. 260), and "Jamshah" (p. 172,
for Jánsháh). These faults may not excuse my default: however, I can summon to
my defence the Saturday Review, that past-master in the art and mystery of
carping criticism, which, noticing my first two volumes (Jan. 2, 1886),
declares them "laudably free from misprints."
"Captain Burton's delight in straining the language beyond its capabilities(?)
finds a wide field when he comes to those passages in the original which are
written in rhyming prose" (p. 181). "Captain Burton of course could not
neglect such an opportunity for display of linguistic flexibility on the model
of 'Peter Parley picked a peck of pickled peppers"' (p. 182, where the Saj'a
or prose rhyme is most ignorantly confounded with our peculiarly English
alliteration). But this is wilfully to misstate the matter. Let me repeat my
conviction (Terminal Essay, 144-145) that The Nights, in its present
condition, was intended as a text or handbook for the Ráwí or professional
story-teller, who would declaim the recitative in quasi-conversational tones,
would intone the Saj'a and would chant the metrical portions to the twanging
of the Rabábah or one-stringed viol. The Reviewer declares that the original
has many such passages; but why does he not tell the reader that almost the
whole Koran, and indeed all classical Arab prose, is composed in such
"jingle"? "Doubtfully pleasing in the Arabic," it may "sound the reverse of
melodious in our own tongue" (p. 282); yet no one finds fault with it in the
older English authors (Terminal Essay, p. 220), and all praised the free use
of it in Eastwick's "Gulistán." Torrens, Lane and Payne deliberately rejected
it, each for his own and several reason; Torrens because he never dreamt of
the application, Lane, because his scanty knowledge of English stood in his
way; and Payne because he aimed at a severely classical style, which could
only lose grace, vigour and harmony by such exotic decoration. In these
matters every writer has an undoubted right to carry out his own view,
remembering the while that it is impossible to please all tastes. I imitated
the Saj'a, because I held it to be an essential part of the work and of my
fifty reviewers none save the Edinburgh considered the reproduction of the
original manner aught save a success. I care only to satisfy those whose
judgment is satisfactory: "the abuse and contempt of ignorant writers hurts me
very little," as Darwin says (iii. 88), and we all hold with Don Quixote that,
es mejor ser loado de los pocos sabios, que burlado de los muchos necios.
"This amusement (of reproducing the Saj'a) may be carried to any length
(how?), and we do not see why Captain Burton neglects the metre of the poetry,
or divides his translation into sentences by stops, or permits any break in
the continuity of the narrative, since none such exists in the Arabic" (p.
182). My reply is that I neglect the original metres first and chiefly because
I do not care to "caper in fetters," as said Drummond of Hawthornden; and,
secondly, because many of them are unfamiliar and consequently unpleasant to
English ears. The exceptions are mostly two, the Rajaz (Anapaests and Iambs,
Terminal Essay, x. 253), and the Tawíl or long measure (ibid. pp. 242, 255),
which Mr. Lyall (Translations of Ancient Arab. Poetry, p. xix.) compares with
"Abt Vogler,"
And there! ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head.
This metre greatly outnumbers all others in The Nights; but its lilting
measure by no means suits every theme, and in English it is apt to wax
monotonous.
"The following example of a literal rendering which Mr. Payne adduces (vol.
ix. 381: camp. my vol. v. 66) in order to show the difficulty of turning the
phraseology of the original into good English, should have served Captain
Burton as a model, and we are surprised he has not adopted so charmingly
cumbrous a style" (p. 102). I shall quote the whole passage in question and
shall show that by the most unimportant changes, omissions and transpositions,
without losing a word, the whole becomes excellent English, and falls far
behind the Reviewer's style in the contention for "cumbrousness":--
"When morrowed the morning he bedabbled his feet with the water they twain had
expressed from the herb and, going-down to the sea, went thereupon, walking
days and nights, he wondering the while at the horrors of the ocean and the
marvels and rarities thereof. And he ceased not faring over the face of the
waters till he arrived at an island as indeed it were Paradise. So Bulukiya
went up thereto and fell to wondering thereanent and at the beauties thereof;
and he found it a great island whose dust was saffron and its gravel were
carnelian and precious stones: its edges were gelsomine and the growth was the
goodliest of the trees and the brightest of the scented herbs and the sweetest
of them. Its rivulets were a-flowing; its brushwood was of the Comorin aloe
and the Sumatran lign- aloes; its reeds were sugar-canes and round about it
bloomed rose and narcissus and amaranth and gilliflower and chamomile and lily
and violet, all therein being of several kinds and different tints. The birds
warbled upon those trees and the whole island was fair of attributes and
spacious of sides and abundant of good things, comprising in fine all of
beauty and loveliness," etc. (Payne, vol. ix. p. 381).
The Reviewer cites in his list, but evidently has not read, the "Tales from
the Arabic," etc., printed as a sequel to The Nights, or he would have known
that Mr. Payne, for the second part of his work, deliberately adopted a style
literal as that above-quoted because it was the liveliest copy of the
original.
We now come to the crucial matter of my version, the annotative concerning
which this "decent gentleman," as we suppose this critic would entitle himself
(p. 185), finds a fair channel of discharge for vituperative rhetoric. But
before entering upon this subject I must be allowed to repeat a twice-told
tale and once more to give the raison d'être of my long labour. When a friend
asked me point-blank why I was bringing out my translation so soon after
another and a most scholarly version, my reply was as follows:--"Sundry
students of Orientalism assure me that they are anxious to have the work in
its crudest and most realistic form. I have received letters saying, Let us
know (you who can) what the Arab of The Nights was: if good and high-minded
let us see him: if witty and humorous let us hear him: if coarse and
uncultivated, rude, childish and indecent, still let us have him to the very
letter. We want for once the genuine man. We would have a mediæval Arab
telling the tales and traditions with the lays and legends of his own land in
his own way, and showing the world what he has remained and how he has
survived to this day, while we Westerns have progressed in culture and
refinement. Above all things give us the naive and plain-spoken language of
the original--such a contrast with the English of our times--and show us, by
the side of these enfantillages, the accumulated wit and wisdom,
life-knowledge and experience of an old-world race. We want also the technique
of the Recueil, its division into nights, its monorhyme, in fact everything
that gives it cachet and character." Now I could satisfy the longing, which is
legitimate enough, only by annotation, by a running commentary, as it were,
enabling the student to read between the lines and to understand hints and
innuendoes that would otherwise have passed by wholly unheeded. I determined
that subscribers should find in my book what does not occur in any other,
making it a repertory of Eastern knowledge in its esoteric phase, by no means
intended for the many-headed but solely for the few who are not too wise to
learn or so ignorant as to ignore their own ignorance. I regretted to display
the gross and bestial vices of the original, in the rare places where
obscenity becomes rampant, but not the less I held it my duty to translate the
text word for word, instead of garbling it and mangling it by perversion and
castration. My rendering (I promised) would be something novel, wholly
different from all other versions, and it would leave very little for any
future interpreter.[FN#453]
And I resolved that, in case of the spiteful philanthropy and the rabid
pornophobic suggestion of certain ornaments of the Home-Press being acted
upon, to appear in Court with my version of The Nights in one hand and bearing
in the other the Bible (especially the Old Testament, a free translation from
an ancient Oriental work) and Shakespeare, with Petronius Arbiter and Rabelais
by way of support and reserve. The two former are printed by millions; they
find their way into the hands of children, and they are the twin columns which
support the scanty edifice of our universal home-reading. The Arbiter is
sotadical as Abú Nowás and the Curé of Meudon is surpassing in what appears
uncleanness to the eye of outsight not of insight. Yet both have been
translated textually and literally by eminent Englishmen and gentlemen, and
have been printed and published as an "extra series" by Mr. Bohn's most
respectable firm and solo by Messieurs Bell and Daldy. And if The Nights are
to be bowdlerised for students, why not, I again ask, mutilate Plato and
Juvenal, the Romances of the Middle Ages, Boccaccio and Petrarch and the
Elizabethan dramatists one and all? What hypocrisy to blaterate about The
Nights in presence of such triumphs of the Natural! How absurd to swallow such
camels and to strain at my midge!
But I had another object while making the notes a Repertory of Eastern
knowledge in its esoteric form (Foreword, p. xvii.). Having failed to free the
Anthropological Society from the fetters of mauvaise honte and the
mock-modesty which compels travellers and ethnological students to keep
silence concerning one side of human nature (and that side the most
interesting to mankind), I proposed to supply the want in these pages. The
England of our day would fain bring up both sexes and keep all ages in
profound ignorance of sexual and intersexual relations; and the consequences
of that imbecility are peculiarly cruel and afflicting. How often do we hear
women in Society lamenting that they have absolutely no knowledge of their own
physiology; and at what heavy price must this fruit of the knowledge-tree be
bought by the young first entering life. Shall we ever understand that
ignorance is not innocence? What an absurdum is a veteran officer who has
spent a quarter-century in the East without learning that all Moslem women are
circumcised, and without a notion of how female circumcision is effected;
without an idea of the difference between the Jewish and the Moslem rite as
regards males; without an inkling of the Armenian process whereby the cutting
is concealed, and without the slightest theoretical knowledge concerning the
mental and spiritual effect of the operation. Where then is the shame of
teaching what it is shameful not to have learnt? But the ultra-delicacy, the
squeamishness of an age which is by no means purer or more virtuous than its
ruder predecessors, has ended in trenching upon the ridiculous. Let us see
what the modern English woman and her Anglo-American sister have become under
the working of a mock-modesty which too often acts cloak to real dévergondage;
and how Respectability unmakes what Nature made. She has feet but no "toes";
ankles but no "calves"; knees but no "thighs"; a stomach but no "belly" nor
"bowels"; a heart but no "bladder" nor "groin"; a liver end no "kidneys"; hips
and no "haunches"; a bust and no "backside" nor "buttocks": in fact, she is a
monstrum, a figure fit only to frighten the crows.
But the Edinburgh knows nothing of these things, and the "decent gentleman,"
like the lady who doth protest overmuch, persistently fixes his eye upon a
single side of the shield." Probably no European has ever gathered such an
appalling collection of degrading customs and statistics of vice as is
contained in Captain Burton's translation of the 'Arabian Nights' (p. 185). He
finds in the case of Mr. Payne, like myself, "no adequate justification for
flooding the world (!) with an ocean of filth" (ibid.) showing that he also
can be (as said the past-master of catch-words, the primus verborum artifex)
"an interested rhetorician inebriated with the exuberance of his own
verbosity." But audi alteram partem--my view of the question. I have no
apology to make for the details offered to the students of Moslem usages and
customs, who will find in them much to learn and more to suggest the necessity
of learning. On no wise ashamed am I of lecturing upon these esoteric matters,
the most important to humanity, at a time when their absence from the novel of
modern society veils with a double gloom the night-side of human nature. Nay,
I take pride to myself for so doing in the face of silly prejudice and
miserable hypocrisy, and I venture to hold myself in the light of a public
benefactor. In fact, I consider my labours as a legacy bequeathed to my
countrymen at a most critical time when England the puissantest of Moslem
powers is called upon, without adequate knowledge of the Moslem's inner life,
to administer Egypt as well as to rule India. And while Pharisee and Philister
may be or may pretend to be "shocked" and "horrified" by my pages, the sound
common sense of a public, which is slowly but surely emancipating itself from
the prudish and prurient reticences and the immodest and immoral modesties of
the early xixth century, will in good time do me, I am convinced, full and
ample justice.
In p. 184 the Reviewer sneers at me for writing "Roum" in lieu of Rum or Rúm;
but what would the latter have suggested to the home-reader save a reference
to the Jamaican drink? He also corrects me (vol. v. 248) in the matter of the
late Mr. Emanuel Deutsch (p. 184), who excised "our Saviour" from the article
on the Talmud reprinted amongst his literary remains. The Reviewer, or
inspirer of the Review, let me own, knew more of Mr. Deutsch than I, a simple
acquaintance, could know; but perhaps he does not know all, and if he did he
probably would not publish his knowledge. The truth is that Mr. Deutsch was,
during his younger years, a liberal, nay, a latitudinarian in religion,
differing little from the so-styled "Christian Unitarian." But when failing
health drove him to Egypt and his hour drew nigh he became (and all honour to
him!) the scrupulous and even fanatical Hebrew of the Hebrews; he consorted
mainly with the followers and divines of his own faith, and it is said that he
ordered himself when dying to be taken out of bed and placed upon the bare
floor. The "Saviour" of the article was perhaps written in his earlier phase
of religious thought, and it was excised as the end drew in sight.
"Captain Burton's experience in the East seems to have obliterated any (all?)
sentiments of chivalry, for he is never weary of recording disparaging
estimates of women, and apparently delights in discovering evidence of
'feminine devilry"' (p. 184). This argumentum ad feminam is sharpish practice,
much after the manner of the Christian "Fathers of the Church" who, themselves
vehemently doubting the existence of souls non- masculine, falsely and
foolishly ascribed the theory and its consequences to Mohammed and the
Moslems. And here the Persian proverb holds good "Harf-i-kufr kufr níst"--to
speak of blasphemy is not blasphemous. Curious readers will consult the
article "Woman" in my Terminal Essay (x. 167), which alone refutes this silly
scandal. I never pretended to understand woman, and, as Balzac says, no wonder
man fails when He who created her was by no means successful. But in The
Nights we meet principally Egyptian maids, matrons and widows, of whose
"devilry" I cannot speak too highly, and in this matter even the pudibund Lane
is as free-spoken as myself. Like the natives of warm, damp and malarious
lowlands and river-valleys adjacent to rugged and healthy uplands, such as
Mazanderán, Sind, Malabar and California, the passions and the sexual powers
of the females greatly exceed those of their males, and hence a notable
development of the crude form of polyandry popularly termed whoredom. Nor have
the women of the Nile valley improved under our rule. The last time I visited
Cairo a Fellah wench, big, burly and boisterous, threatened one morning, in a
fine new French avenue off the Ezbekiyah Gardens, to expose her person unless
bought off with a piastre. And generally the condition of womenkind throughout
the Nile-valley reminded me of that frantic outbreak of debauchery which
characterised Afghanistán during its ill-judged occupation by Lord Auckland,
and Sind after the conquest by Sir Charles Napier.
"Captain Burton actually depends upon the respectable and antiquated
D'Herbelot for his information" (p. 184). This silly skit at the two great
French Orientalists, D'Herbelot and Galland, is indeed worthy of a clique
which, puff and struggle however much it will, can never do a tithe of the
good work found in the Bibliothéque Orientale. The book was issued in an
unfinished state; in many points it has been superseded, during its life of a
century and a half, by modern studies, but it is still a mine of facts, and a
revised edition would be a boon to students. Again, I have consulted Prof.
Palmer's work, and the publications of the Palæographical Society (p. 184);
but I nowhere find the proofs that the Naskhi character (vol. i. 128) so long
preceded the Cufic which, amongst vulgar Moslems, is looked upon like black
letter in Europe. But Semitic epigraphy is only now entering upon its second
stage of study, the first being mere tentative ignorance: about 80 years ago
the illustrious De Sacy proved, in a learned memoir, the non-existence of
letters in Arabia before the days of Mohammed. But Palmer[FN#454], Halevy,
Robertson Smith, Doughty and Euting have changed all that, and Herr Eduard
Glaser of Prague is now bringing back from Sana'á some 390 Sabaean
epigraphs--a mass of new-old literature.
And now, having passed in review, and having been much scandalised by the
"extravagant claims of the complete translations over the Standard Version"--a
term which properly applies only to the Editio princeps, 3 vols. 8vo--the
Edinburgh delivers a parting and insolent sting. "The different versions,
however, have each its proper destination--Galland for the nursery, Lane for
the library, Payne for the study, and Burton for the sewers" (p. 184). I need
hardly attempt to precise the ultimate and well merited office of his article:
the gall in that ink may enable it hygienically to excel for certain purposes
the best of "curl-papers." Then our critic passes to the history of the work
concerning which nothing need be said: it is bodily borrowed from Lane's
Preface (pp. ix. xv.), and his Terminal Review (iii. 735-47) with a few
unimportant and uninteresting details taken from Al-Makrízí, and probably from
the studies of the late Rogers Bey (pp. 191-92). Here the cult of the Uncle
and Master emerges most extravagantly. "It was Lane who first brought out the
importance of the 'Arabian Nights' as constituting a picture of Moslem life
and manners" (p. 192); thus wholly ignoring the claims of Galland, to whom and
whom alone the honour is due. But almost every statement concerning the French
Professor involves more or less of lapse. "It was in 1704 that Antoine
Galland, sometime of the French embassy at Constantinople, but then professor
at the Collége de France, presented the world with the contents of an Arab
Manuscript which he had brought from Syria and which bore the title of 'The
Thousand Nights and One Night'" (p. 167), thus ignoring the famous Il a fallu
le faire venir de Syrie. At that time (1704) Galland was still at Caen in the
employ of "L'intendant Fouquet"; and he brought with him no MS., as he himself
expressly assures us in Preface to his first volume. Here are two telling
mistakes in one page, and in the next (p. 168) we find "As a professed
translation Galland's 'Mille et une Nuits' (N.B. the Frenchman always wrote
Mille et une Nuit)[FN#455] is an audacious fraud. "It requires something more
than" audacity "to offer such misstatement even in the pages of the Edinburgh,
and can anything be falser than to declare "the whole of the last fourteen
tales have nothing whatever to do with the 'Nights'"?
These bévues, which give us the fairest measure for the Reviewer's competence
to review, are followed (p. 189) by a series of obsolete assertions. "The
highest authority on this point (the date) is the late Mr. Lane, who states
his unqualified conviction that the tales represent the social life of
mediaerval Egypt, and he selects a period approaching the close of the
fifteenth century as the probable date of collection, though some of the tales
are, he believes, rather later" (p. 189). Mr. Lane's studies upon the subject
were painfully perfunctory. He distinctly states (Preface, p. xii.) that "the
work was commenced and completed by one man," or at least that "one man
completed what another commenced." With a marvellous want of critical acumen
he could not distinguish the vast difference of style and diction, treatment
and sentiments, which at once strikes every intelligent reader, and which
proves incontestably that many hands took part in the Great Saga-book. He
speaks of "Galland's very imperfect MS.," but he never took the trouble to
inspect the three volumes in question which are still in the Bibliothèque
Nationale. And when he opines that "it (the work) was most probably not
commenced earlier than the fifteenth century of our era" (Pref. p. xiii.) M.
Hermann Zotenberg, judging from the style of writing, would attribute the MS.
to the beginning[FN#456] of the xivth century. The French Savant has printed a
specimen page in his Histoire d'Alâ al-Dîn (p. 6; see my Suppl. vol. iii.,
Foreword p. ix.); and now, at the request of sundry experts, he is preparing
for publication other proofs which confirm his opinion. We must correct Lane's
fifteenth century to thirteenth century --a difference of only 200
years.[FN#457]
After this unhappy excursus the Reviewer proceeds to offer a most
unintelligent estimate of the Great Recueil. "Enchantment" may be "a constant
motive," but it is wholly secondary and subservient: "the true and universal
theme is love;" "'all are but the ministers of love' absolutely subordinate to
the great theme" (p. 193). This is the usual half-truth and whole unfact. Love
and war, or rather war and love, form the bases of all romantic fiction even
as they are the motor power of the myriad forms and fashions of dancing. This
may not appear from Lane's mangled and mutilated version which carefully omits
all the tales of chivalry and conquest as the History of Gharíb and his
brother 'Ajíb (vol. vi. 257) and that of Omar ibn Al-Nu'umán, "which is, as a
whole so very unreadable" (p. 172) though by no means more so than our
European romances. But the reverse is the case with the original composition.
Again, "These romantic lovers who will go through fire to meet each other, are
not in themselves interesting characters: it may be questioned whether they
have any character at all" (p. 195). "The story and not the delineation of
character is the essence of the 'Arabian Nights'" (p. 196). I can only marvel
at the utter want of comprehension and appreciation with which this critic
read what he wrote about: one hemisphere of his brain must have been otherwise
occupied and his mental cecity makes him a phenomenon even amongst reviewers.
He thus ignores all the lofty morale of the work, its marvellous pathos and
humour, its tender sentiment and fine touches of portraiture, the personal
individuality and the nice discrimination between the manifold heroes and
heroines which combine to make it a book for all time.
The critic ends his article with doing what critics should carefully avoid to
do. After shrewdly displaying his powers of invective and depreciation he has
submitted to his readers a sample of his own workmanship. He persists in
writing "Zobeyda," "Khalifa," "Aziza" (p. 194) and "Kahramana" (p. 199)
without the terminal aspirate which, in Arabic if not in Turkish, is a sine
quâ non (see my Suppl. vol. v. 302). He preserves the pretentious blunder "The
Khalif" (p. 193), a word which does not exist in Arabic. He translates (p.
181), although I have taught him to do better, "Hádimu 'I-Lizzáti wa Mufarriku
'l-Jama'át," by "Terminator of Delights and Separator of Companies" instead of
Destroyer of delights and Severer of societies. And lastly he pads the end of
his article (pp. 196-199) with five dreary extracts from Lane (i. 372-73) who
can be dull even when translating the Immortal Barber.
The first quotation is so far changed that the peppering of commas (three to
the initial line of the original) disappears to the reader's gain, Lane's
textual date (App. 263) is also exchanged for that of the notes (A.H. 653);
and the "æra of Alexander," A.M. 7320, an absurdity which has its value in
proving the worthlessness of such chronology, is clean omitted, because Lane
used the worthless Bull Edit. The latinisms due to Lane show here in
force--"Looked for a considerable time" (Maliyyan = for a long while); "there
is an announcement that presenteth itself to me" (a matter which hath come to
my knowledge) and "thou hast dissipated[FN#458] my mind" (Azhakta rúhí = thou
scatterest my wits, in the Calc. Edit. Saghgharta rúhí = thou belittles" my
mind). But even Lane never wrote "I only required thee to shave my head"--the
adverb thus qualifying, as the ignoramus loves to do, the wrong verb--for "I
required thee only to shave my head." In the second échantillon we have "a
piece of gold" as equivalent of a quarter-diner and "for God's sake" which
certainly does not preserve local colour. In No. 3 we find "'May God,' said
I," etc.; "There is no deity but God! Mohammed is God's apostle!" Here Allah
ought invariably to be used, e.g. "Mohammed is the Apostle of Allah," unless
the English name of the Deity be absolutely required as in "There is no god
but the God." The Moslem's "Wa'lláhi" must not be rendered "By God," a verbal
translation and an absolute nonequivalent; the terms Jehovah, Allah and God
and the use of them involving manifold fine distinctions. If it be true that
God made man, man in his turn made and mismade God who thus becomes a Son of
Man and a mere racial type. I need not trouble my reader with further notices
of these extracts whose sole use is to show the phenomenal dullness of Lane's
latinised style: I prefer even Torrens (p. 273).
"We have spoken severely with regard to the last" (my version), says the
Reviewer (p.185), and verily I thank him therefor. Laudari ab illaudato has
never been my ambition. A writer so learned and so disinterested could hurt my
feelings and mortify my pride only by approving me and praising me. Nor have I
any desire to be exalted in the pages of the Edinburgh, so famous for its
incartades of old. As Dryden says, "He has done me all the honour that any man
can receive from him, which is to be railed at by him." I am content to share
the vituperation of this veteran--incapable in company with the poetaster
George Gordon who suffered for "this Lord's station;" with that "burnish fly
in the pride of May," Macaulay, and with the great trio, Darwin, Huxley and
Hooker, who also have been the butts of his bitter and malignant abuse (April
'63 and April '73). And lastly I have no stomach for sweet words from the
present Editor of the Edinburgh Mr. Henry Reeve, a cross and cross-grained old
man whose surly temper is equalled only by his ignoble jealousy of another's
success. Let them bedevil the thin-skinned with their godless ribaldry; for
myself peu m'importe--my shoulders are broad enough to bear all their envy,
hatred and malice.
During the three years which have elapsed since I first began printing my book
I have not had often to complain of mere gratuitous impertinence, and a single
exception deserves some notice. The following lines which I addressed to The
Academy (August 11, '88) will suffice to lay my case before my readers:--
The Bestial Element in Man.
"One hesitates to dissent from so great an authority as Sir Richard Burton on
all that relates to the bestial element in man." So writes (p. xii.,
Introduction to the Fables of Pilpay), with uncalled-for impertinence, Mr.
Joseph Jacobs, who goes out of his way to be offensive, and who confesses to
having derived all his knowledge of my views not from "the notorious Terminal
Essay of the Nights," but from the excellent article by Mr. Thomas Davidson on
"Beast-fables," in Chambers's Cyclopædia, Edinburgh, 1888. This lofty
standpoint of morality was probably occupied for a reason by a writer who
dedicates "To my dear wife" a volume rich in anecdotes grivoises, and not poor
in language the contrary of conventional. However, I suffer from this Maccabee
in good society together with Prof. Max Müller (pp. xxvi. and xxxiii.), Mr.
Clouston (pp. xxxiii. and xxxv.), Byron (p. xlvi.), Theodor Benfey (p.
xlvii.), Mr. W. G. Rutherford (p. xlviii.), and Bishop Lightfoot (p. xlix.).
All this eminent half-dozen is glanced at, with distinct and several sneers,
in a little volume which, rendered useless by lack of notes and index, must
advertise itself by the réclame of abuse.
As regards the reminiscence of Homo Darwinienesis by Homo Sapiens, doubtless
it would ex hypothesi be common to mankind. Yet to me Africa is the old home
of the Beast-fable, because Egypt was the inventor of the alphabet, the cradle
of letters, the preacher of animism and metempsychosis, and, generally, the
source of all human civilisation.